Life without Google

Lets build the plan for the Search engine of the future.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

The threads about the sandbox have sparked off more criticism of Google with respect to its commercialism and ever increasing disregard for the quality of its results. It is becoming more apparent that there are too many clever people who can outwit the algos by fair means or foul. I think that it may be time for a new search engine to emerge that actually guarantees quality results by charging for inclusion.

If someone was willing to start a new search engine that could index the web as it stands, screen the results then only allow manual inclusion we could have a high quality resource that would clearly be very attractive to the vast majority of users. Here is my vision.

* All sites (eventually) would be categorised and screened by humans.

* It could be run with an army of
trusted editors in the same way as DMOZ but they would be paid a commission for each site they edited. Lets say that there would be a charge of $100 dollars per annum for inclusion.

* The inclusion charge would finance the employment of manual editors. The editors could be signed up in the same way as DMOZ but they would be paid a commission for each site they edited.

* SERPS would be determined by an algorithm based on strictly defined guidelines. Sites in contravention of these guidelines would be removed without notice and they would have to pay an additional fee to resubmit.

* Sponsored results would still be permitted.

* There would be an option to allow free inclusion for charity and other defined non-commercial sites.

* The contents of the initial crawl would gradually be manually edited and screened to remove the aff schemes, directories and other harmful and worthless sites. This would be relatively easy. Well, they are easy to find aren't they? :)

* Sites included in the initial crawl would get their first year free but would have to pay the subscription to remain in the index.

* It could create its own contextual advertising based on sites which had passed it's inclusion test. If this was successful people would work harder to make sure that their sites were of sufficient quality to be accepted.

* It could be promoted against the others as a useful, accurate, trustworthy resource that we could happily allow our kids to use. The quality of the results would be so good that it would sell itself. The whole world would love it!

* Reporting of "bad" sites that slipped into the directory would be actively encouraged.

Am I being idealistic? Add to this list as you see fit ...